CHAPTER 62

The Brake Country

‘What does your father mean to do about Trumpington Wood?’ That was the first word from Lord Chiltern after he had shaken hands with his guest.

‘Isn’t it all right yet?’

’All right?  No!  How can a wood like that be all right without a man about the place who knows anything of the nature of a fox?  In your grandfather’s time—­’

‘My great-uncle you mean.’

’Well—­your great-uncle!—­they used to trap the foxes there.  There was a fellow named Fothergill who used to come there for shooting.  Now it is worse than ever.  Nobody shoots there because there is nothing to shoot.  There isn’t a keeper.  Every scamp is allowed to go where he pleases, and of course there isn’t a fox in the whole place.  My huntsman laughs at me when I ask him to draw it.’  As the indignant Master of the Brake Hounds said this the very fire flashed from his eyes.

‘My dear,’ said Lady Chiltern expostulating, ’Lord Silverbridge hasn’t been in the house above half an hour.’

’What does that matter?  When a thing has to be said it had better be said at once.’

Phineas Finn was staying at Harrington with his intimate friends the Chilterns, as were a certain Mr and Mrs Maule, both of whom were addicted to hunting,—­the lady whose maiden name was Palliser, being a cousin of Lord Silverbridge.  On that day also a certain Mr and Mrs Spooner dined at Harrington.  Mr and Mrs Spooner were both very much given to hunting, as seemed to be necessarily the case with everybody admitted to the house.  Mr Spooner was a gentleman who might be on the wrong side of fifty, with a red nose, very vigorous, and submissive in regard to all things but port-wine.  His wife was perhaps something more than half his age, a stout, hard-riding, handsome woman.  She had been the penniless daughter of a retired officer,—­but yet had managed to ride on whatever animal anyone would lend her.  Then Mr Spooner, who had for many years been part and parcel of the Brake hunt, and who was much in want of a wife, had, luckily for her, cast his eyes upon Miss Leatherside.  It was thought that upon the whole she made him a good wife.  She hunted four days a week, and he could afford to keep horses for her.  She never flirted, and wanted no one to open gates.  Tom Spooner himself was not always so forward as he used to be; but his wife was always there and would tell him all that he did not see himself.  And she was a good housewife, taking care that nothing should be spent lavishly, except upon the stable.  Of him, too, and of his health, she was careful, never scrupling to say a word in season when he was likely to hurt himself, either among the fences, or among the decanters.  ’You ain’t so young as you were, Tom.  Don’t think of doing it.’  This she would say to him with a loud voice when she would find him pausing at a fence.  Then she would hop over herself and he would go round.  She as ‘quite a providence to him’, as her mother, old Mrs Leatherside, would say.